A new dress and some fitting help

I've just completed the dress I had written about in my previous post, the one with sleeve ruffles from my latest Japanese sewing book:

I LOVE it! I bought the fabric in a local shop, it's a stretchy polyester/cotton mix, it's very soft and drapes well and above all I was drawn to its silver sheen:

You can't really tell from the pictures but it's super shiny and metallic in real life, I've never had a glittery piece of clothing so that's a nice change from my usual cute animal/any shade of blue makes! Also I wasn't scared of working with this fabric because even though it's soft (ie you must press every single seam or it'll be a puckering mess) I now have a wonderful Janome sewing machine that tackles every project I give it, I feel like I can sew anything with it :) It's one of the cheapest machines of this brand (Facility 21) but it's a really good, sturdy one in comparison with those I used to have (a Brother and a few Singer).
In my last post I also wrote about fitting alterations for some specific problems of mine: as I was getting used to wearing me made clothes I started to notice that my tops and dresses would ride up, with the front neckline getting uncomfortably close to my throat and the shoulder seams ending far behind on my back. These problems come from having a lower rounded back with forward shoulders and a hollow chest, and since it gets worse as you grow older, you won't get rid of these with a few Pilates lessons^^ So, I roamed the internet and beside being relieved to learn that I wasn't particularly deformed since many people seem to have the same problems, I found a few fitting solutions. I tried them and came up with the perfect formula for me:

- I lengthen the back by 1.5 cm thanks to shoulder darts, as shown in these drawings (I cannot find the site/blog where I saw this alteration so I can't link to them but I thank them for saving my life with this technique :)

- I move the back shoulder seam forward by 1 cm at the neckpoint and by 1.5 cm at the shoulder point, removing the same amount from the front shoulder seam and I usually remove 1 to 1.5 cm from the front neckline on the fold:

Of course I also have to alter my sleeve pattern by adding 1.5 to the back and removing the same amount from the front like so:

And that's it, as I said it works perfectly for me but you may want to make a muslin if you want to try these alterations, the amounts I add/remove are quite big because my rounded back and forward shoulders are pronounced but for others even a 0.5 adjustment can make a huge difference!

My favourite type of fabric

I've realised that out of the garments I wear the most, four of them were made using a specific type of fabric that I can only find at Spotlight, their printed muslin:

It's 100% cotton and it's super airy yet I find it crispier than cotton veil, so on the one hand it makes otherwise simple designs look quite sophisticated but on the other hand it's seriously see-through and you must wear a camisole underneath!
I blogged about my swans top a few months ago, it was my first time working with muslin and the beginning of my love affair with this fabric :)
The second garment I made using muslin is a tiny bunnies top from my first Sewing magazine:

I changed the design of the sleeves to slimmer ones and lined the front and back yokes with off-white polycotton to add strength and a little opacity^^ and of course the print is super cute!
The next top made from muslin is my big bunnies Hoya blouse:

This time I had to line the two front pieces with polycotton but the result is not too stiff IMO, I couldn't use the bunnies fabric as a lining because the inside print would have shown on the outside!
Finally I've recently completed another muslin top using the most amazing print I've ever seen (not an overstatement, as usual :)

How gorgeous is that?? The corally looking flowers kill me ! I used a dress pattern from this book and simply shortened the length of the front and back pieces obviously:

I don't know if this sort of fabric can be found elsewhere but I've never seen it outside of Spotlight and certainly not in my local shops so I'll have to wait until I can travel again and fill my suitcase with it! I also plan on making the dress version of this pattern, it's so elegant :) And you may have noticed darts on the back of the tops, that's because I've been fighting to get a correct fit for my rounded back and forward shoulders, I'll post about my solutions for these problems soon.